What the Boarding-House thought--Landslips--Yarborough House--
The Dane's Dike--Higher Cliffs--The South Landing--The
Flamborough Fleet--Ida, the Flamebearer--A Storm--A talk in a
Limekiln--Flamborough Fishermen--Coffee before Rum--No
Drunkards--A Landlord's Experiences--Old-fashioned Honesty.
The party--four gentlemen and one lady--at the boarding-house where I
tarried to dine, agreed unanimously that to pass a whole Sunday morning
in walking, was especially blameworthy. Besides being wrong in itself,
it was "setting such a bad example;" nor would they hear reason on the
question. With them, indeed, it was no question: they quoted the fourth
commandment, and that settled it. Any departure from that was decidedly
wrong, if not sinful. And then, perhaps out of a benevolent desire for
my spiritual welfare, they urged me to stay till the morrow, when I
might join them in a boat-trip to the Head and help to fire guns at the
seafowl. It surprised me somewhat to hear them discuss their project
with as much animation as if they had not just administered a homily to
me, or the day had not been Sunday. The possibilities of weather, the
merits of cold pies, sandwiches, and lively bottled drinks, powder and
shot moreover, and tidal contingencies, were talked about in a way that
led me to infer there was nothing at all wrong in consuming the holy day
with anticipations of pleasure to come in the days reckoned unholy. Then
one of the party set off to walk to a village three miles distant; and
presently, when I started for Flamborough, the other three accompanied
me as far as the path along the cliff was easy to the foot. So I could
only infer again that there is nothing wrong in short walks on a Sunday.
It is simply the distance that constitutes the difference between good
and evil. Some folk appear to believe that if they only sit under a
pulpit in the morning, they have earned a dispensation for the rest of
the day.
The cliffs now are sixty feet in height, broken by frequent slips in the
upper stratum of clay, and numerous cracks running along the path marks
the limits of future falls. One of the slips appeared to be but a few
hours old, and the lumps, of all dimensions, with patches of grass and
weeds sticking out here and there, lying in a great confused slope,
suggested the idea of an avalanche of clay. Ere long you come to
Yarborough House, a stately mansion standing embowered by trees about a
furlong from the shore. Holding that an Englishman has an inherent right
of way along the edge of his own country, I gave no heed to the usual
wooden warning to trespassers, erected where the path strikes inland at
the skirt of the grounds, and kept along the pathless margin of the
cliff. Nothing appeared to be disturbed by my presence except a few
rabbits, that darted as if in terror to their burrows. Once past the
grounds you come into large fields, where the grain grows so close to
the brink of the precipice, that you wonder alike at the thrift of the
Yorkshire farmers, and the skill with which they drive their ploughs in
critical situations.
As you proceed, the cliffs rise higher, interrupted in places by narrow
gullies, one of which is so deep and the farther bank so high as to
appear truly formidable, and shut out all prospect to the east. After a
difficult scramble down, and a more difficult scramble up, you find
yourself on the top of a ridge, which, stretching all across the base of
the headland from sea to sea, along the margin of a natural ravine,
remains a monument, miles in length, of the days
"When Denmark's Raven soar'd on high,
Triumphant through Northumbrian sky."
It is the "Dane's Dike," a barrier raised by our piratical Scandinavian
forefathers to protect their settlements on the great promontory. With
such a fence, they had always a refuge to fall back upon where they
could hold their own, and command the landing-places till more ships and
marauders arrived with succours. As the eye follows the straight line of
the huge grass-grown embankment, you will feel something like admiration
of the resolute industry by which it was raised, and perhaps think of
the fierce battles which its now lonely slopes must have once witnessed.
Still the cliffs ascend. Farther on I came to a broader and deeper
ravine, at the mouth of which a few boats lay moored; and others hauled
up on the beach, and coming nearer, I saw boat after boat lodged here
and there on the slopes, even to the level ground above, where, judging
from the number, the fleet found its rendezvous. It was curious to see
so many keels out of their element, most of them gay with stripes of
blue and red, and bearing the names of the wives and daughters of
_Flambro'_. The little bay, however, known as the South Landing, is one
of the two ports of Flamborough: the other, as we shall see after
passing the lighthouse, is similar in formation--a mere gap in the
cliffs. They might be called providential landing-places, for without
them the fishermen of Flamborough would have no access to the sea,
except by ladders down the precipice. As it is, the declivity is very
steep; and it is only by hauling them up to every available spot, that
room is found for the numerous boats.
Here it was that Ida, the Flamebearer, is supposed to have landed, when
he achieved the conquest of Northumbria; and here the galleys of the
Sea-Kings found a precarious shelter while the daring Northmen leapt on
shore to overrun the land in later centuries, when tradition alone
preserved the remembrance of the former invaders and their warlike
deeds.
I was prowling hither and thither in the ravine, entertained with the
Present while imagining the Past, when the clouds, grown every minute
blacker since noon, let fall their burden with something like tropical
vehemence. For some time there was no perceptible pause in the lightning
or thunder, and against the accompanying rain an umbrella was but as
gauze. I rushed into the arch of a neighbouring limekiln, and once in,
was kept there two hours by the roaring storm. Presently two fishermen,
speeding up from the landing, made for the same shelter, and of course,
under the circumstances, we fraternised at once, and talked the time
away.
Clean and well clad, they were favourable--and as I afterwards saw--not
exceptional specimens of their class. In their opinion the Flamborough
fishermen bear as good a character as any in Yorkshire--perhaps better.
About seven years ago they all resolved to work but six days a week, and
on no account to go to sea on Sundays. They held to their resolve, and,
to the surprise of most, found themselves the better. They earn quite as
much as before, if not more, and go to work with better spirit. During
the herring season it is a common practice with them to put into
Scarborough on Saturday evening, and journey home by rail for the
Sunday, taking advantage of the very low fares at which return tickets
are issued to fishermen. And as for diet, they take a good store of
bread and meat, pies even, in their boats, seeing no reason why they
should not live as well as their neighbours. A glass of rum was
acceptable, especially in cold and blowing weather: but so far as they
knew, there were very few fishermen who would not "choose hot coffee
before rum any day."
There was none of that drinking among fishermen now as there used to be
formerly. You could find some in Flamborough "as liked their glass," but
none to be called drunkards. There is a national school in the village;
but not so well attended as it might be, and perhaps would be if they
had a better schoolmaster. The people generally had pretty good health,
which is possibly the occasion why the last two doctors, finding time
hang heavy on their hands, drank themselves to death. There is, or
rather was in July, 1857, an opening for a doctor in Flamborough.
The rain still fell heavily when we left our shelter, and it kept on
till past midnight. Luckily the village was not a mile distant, and
there I took a comfortable chair by the kitchen fire of _The Ship_. The
landlord corroborated all that the fishermen had told me, with the
reservation that he found it difficult to clear his room of tipplers on
Saturday night, although none could be set down as drunkards. At times
he put on his clock ten minutes, to ensure a clearance before the Sunday
morning, resolutely refusing to refill the glasses after twelve. The
guests would go away growling out a vow never to return to such an
inhospitable house; but not one kept the vow more than a fortnight.
When, nineteen years ago, he determined not to open his house on Sunday
to any but strangers who might chance to arrive from a distance, the
village thought itself scandalized, and the other public-houses
predicted his ruin. They were, however, mistaken. _The Ship_ still
flourishes; and the host and his family "find themselves none the worse
for going to a place of worship, and keeping the house quiet one day in
seven."
"Sometimes," he ended, "we don't think to fasten the front door when we
go to bed; but it's all the same; nobody comes to disturb us." Which may
be taken as an indication that honesty has not yet abandoned
Flamborough.